Beyond the Page

Maria Josefa is a mixed-race Chicana writer whose work draws on family memory, the Sonoran Desert, psychological experience, and speculative imagination. She grew up listening to stories of her grandparents’ childhoods in Arizona and became interested in the ways memory and intergenerational trauma shape identity across generations. Maria Josefa spent more than forty years working in mental health as a psychologist, educator, and administrator.

Her current writing focus includes poetry, memoir, and speculative fiction. Maria Josefa has completed a cross-genre collection of writing entitled At the Gate: Stories, Poems, and Other Crossings. She is also working on a memoir and a speculative fiction novella.

Maria Josefa is a member of the Redwood Writers Club and the California Writers Club.

An earlier version of her poem “Mestiza” appeared in Sinister Wisdom in 1992.